FearTheLiving

It's the worst console (only ever played it on PS2) GTA of the III era only because it didn't benefit at all from coming out after SA. I mean I still enjoy the game but it feels like it came out right after III-VC. VCS on the other hand was a great improvement or at least up there with SA in terms of quality and polish.

LCS is missing original VAs (Toni, Maria) who played decent sized roles in previous GTAs, a lot of cut-scenes for missions through out the game, swimming, graphics, and content. VSC in comparison had all of those.

But what you have to remember is that it was made for PSP (which is less technically advanced) and then ported over to PS2. It was never going to be the best console GTA...But I agree with you about the Voice Actor thing, the others should have reprized their roles

I did take that into account, but then in comparison VCS that's also on PSP and it was a much better game overall.

Cornholio83

Excluding Advance (which I haven't played), after recently playing through all 5 3D GTAs from that era, In my own opinion I'd say VCS narrowly pips LCS to worst in my opinion.

That said, it's very much a case of "least best" rather than worst. I'd class neither as being anywhere near a rubbish game, and I'd happily play through both to 100% again (they gotta get in the queue behind the others though!)

I know that the two stories games are probably underrated since a) they were ports from PSP and b) came after San Andreas, so I try my best to be objective, but still...

My major gripe about LCS to be honest was, to get to 100%, it seemed like I spent the vast majority of the time tackling side missions rather than the story itself, due to both their volume and difficulty. RC Races has to be the singular worst and frustrating mission I've ever encountered in a GTA game. It might just be my perception but it seemed that the side missions in other games were less dominant.

It had its redeeming features, enjoyed the mafia angle and didn't mind Toni as a protag, those two things inch it ahead of VCS for me.

Basically, if you ask me what my favourite GTA game is, I'd likely give you 3 different answers depending on my mood: III (first one I played, great setting), VC (soundtrack, storyline, best protag) or SA (sheer scale and diversity in the map, customisation and features).

Neither of the stories games will ever intrude on that fence-sitting through, as fine games as they are. Like I said, least best.

Vercetti27

GTA III is easily the worst game in the III except advance. The storyline did not interest me, the protagainst had no personality, the missions were very short, etc. In short the game didn't feel alive, it didn't feel like an actual city like it did in LCS.

GTA_Playa21

No.I've just played LCS, SA and VCS. The first 2 i finished the storylines. Got 75% on LCS and completing my way to 100% in SA as of the moment. VCS, I forgot what mission I stopped in. I stopped early in the game, it was boring for me.

tekkenfreek233

I think it's good, but it's not as fleshed out as it could have been, even for the PSP. VCS felt more fleshed out, but the story was sort of boring. Overall, the VCS and LCS did their jobs well and provided a console experience in the palm of your hands, which is what Rockstar wanted to deliver.

fnxrak

Well maybe it's the worst of the gta III era, but that doesn't make it a bad game. IT'S GTA IT CAN NEVER BE BAD!!!!! LOLOLOL but yes maybe I would call it the less good of the series.But hey I got to say something in the defense of the game, at least it has the best GTA intro theme of the GTA III Era

ThatSpecialSomeone

I don't know this game isn't the best from the III era apparently, but for me it has some magic, beautiful atmosphere, I always come back to this game. Just like any other III era game, this is one of the games I'll never stop playing.

TonyMontanaCDL

I will never understand why people bitch and moan about this game. It was made for the handheld, and they pushed it to the limit showing the PSP's limits and how to make a good game on it.

I liked it more than San Andreas, but then again it's my favorite one. The game don't take itself too seriously with a storyline. The main character isn't humanized and made out to feel sympathetic towards. The missions themselves are fun, and there are plenty of things to do in the game.

caseclosedjk

And to the guys above, yes, it was the same engine as Vice City. GTA VC, LCS, and VCS all use the same engine. This can be proven easily.as gta lcs and vcs contain many things from VC hidden in the game. Using codebreaker or gameshark on LCS and VCS spawns many things from VC, and many of the VC animations are used in both.

Its pretty obvious.

The only reason R* used the VC engine was:

1. the SA engine was too advanced for the PSP and the 3 engine was inferior to the VC engine.

WorldWideFM

It's weaker than the other 3D titles, but it was their first attempt at creating a proper GTA experience on a portable console, and for that it does an amazing job. The fact that they managed to create that experience on a portable console without completely toning it down was mindblowing to me at the time. It feels like a fullblown PS2 title.

I replayed through it just before V came out for the first time in 3 years and I liked it. VCS was much better though, you could see that R* Leeds really learnt from the experience of developing LCS, that was another game I replayed before V came out for the first time since 2007. Both have stood the test of time amazingly for portable games, because they really don't feel like portable games at all. When you play the PS2 versions, you feel like your playing a PS2 game, not a PSP game that was ported over, and that's quite a feat.

HazzardX

My III list from best to worst would be
1.San Andreas (best gta game)
2.GTA III (womderful story,wonderful city and the nostalgia )
3.GTA LCS (awesome game, sadly is not for pc)
4.GTA VC (a very good game,don't get me wrong,i really like it but not as much as iii)
5.GTA VCS (this game is pretty good,but not as good as gta vc,the 80s feeling was better in gta vc and the story is not so cool compared to gta vc or lcs)
6.GTA A (the only thing that i like about gta a is the story)

Grievous

Much criticism can be shrugged off when considering it was primarily made as one of the PSP's launch titles, and as such should be mostly viewed from 'it's a prototype' angle, especially as one to Vice City Stories.

But a damn fine prototype it was.

There were many things about Liberty City Stories' I didn't like, mostly due to it not being sufficiently long enough and lacking in cutscenes.

New characters are introduced but then disappear rather too soon, JD O'Toole and Leon McAffrey for example, I just wished we saw more of them.

Lucky Vincenzo was surprisingly enough not the game's main antagonist, despite being the obvious candidate, therefor setting a new record amongst the standard GTA antagonists.

Mickey Hamfist could have acted as Toni's frequent partner, and i'm a bit surprised to see that Toni worked alone for the great majority of times. You would think that for the only Mafia-centric episode of the GTA universe, that your protagonist wouldn't operate in lone-wolf methods such as how all the others did.

As their first run on the PSP technology, they've already shortened a lot of resources in the cutscene department; half of game's cutscenes utilizes the simplistic in-game animation rather than the usual mo-cap sequences. Even so, there were two or three notable omissions, at least to me, which were Toni's ceremony of becoming a made man, Salvatore's arrest, and Salvatore's trial near the end of the game.

The ending also revealed a particular plot element that is rather surprising, and i'm not sure if it was intentionally made to be so. Salvatore gives Toni the 'half a million' he promised to him, to which Toni objects and says that it was originally promised as 'a couple of million'. In-game, Salvatore never once made such promise to Cipriani, we are therefor lead to assume that this occurred off-screen before the start of the game, which was the entire reason why Cipriani returned to Liberty in the first place, the promise of getting a couple of million dollar.

This gives an entire new angle of the scope of the story, that Toni Cipriani didn't remained fiercely loyal to Salvatore just for the sake of loyalty, and didn't perform all those life-threatening stunts and jobs just to effectively put the Leone crime family on the map, but because he was driven to get his pay check, only to get a lot less than he was promised, along with a Elvis costume.

This was never meant to be a sophisticated character driven game, but this sudden moment just appeared rather jarring to me.

It didn't stopped me from replaying the game a good number of times though, not the least of which was its brief length, I would complete the game on one sitting most of the time, no need to even save my progress, i'll just start over again.

I'm not much a 100% completion player with GTAs I must say, nor do I go about causing rampage and mayhem, I mostly do just story missions, and side missions if it unlocks costumes or other things of particular interest.

DrunkenMunkey78

I wouldn't say the worst but certainly not the best, Theres just a huge lack of excitement or re-playability compared to GTA vice city stories if you get what im saying (e.g. you cant fly planes/helicopters) Its like when you compare GTA 4 to San Andreas. The story was good though and i liked Toni